Thousand Plus One Paper Stars
by chionodoxa
Summary: 【Reincarnation】 I am the girl who folds the stars to hold in my hands. I am not the girl who folds cranes to wish upon. I am apologizing for a million hundred thousand wrongs, that are because of me. They say I am not the girl I am supposed to be. Perhaps not. [status: waiting]


**warnings**: Language, violence, darker themes, possible Japanese tradition ruining, gen?, AU, OoCness, etc.**  
><strong>**summary**: [SI/Reincarnation] Perhaps, in another place, I would not know there was a star I haven't seen, but I am the girl who knows there is a sun and a moon and hundreds of millions of stars. I am not the girl I am supposed to be.  
><strong>chapter summary<strong>: The chapter where the protagonist finds they want to live.

**notes**: Another SI taking place in Amegakure no Sato. Please R&R? ^^ Thank you!

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><p>Thousand Plus One Paper Stars | <strong>I: The Girl <strong>| Naruto & Naruto Shippuden © Masashi Kishimoto

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><p>...<p>

BRING ME DOWN **01**  
>—(<em>the girl<em>)—  
>"who is she?"<p>

...

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**M**y sight in this rainy world is blurry from fog and vapor. Often I drink the water falling from the gray clouds, and run oh-so-fast to get scraps, fighting against the unforgiving ground I slip on occasionally with my dirty, scarred bare feet, the shouts and searches of the merchants, and the others who are in the same circumstances as me. Sometimes I get caught by the others, and they are cruel and spiteful, cowards like we all have grown up to be in this crying land.

Sometimes I get caught by the bitter, tired merchants. They are not very nice. No one is in this small village. It's dying from the war outside, and more often than we'd like we are shown no mercy.

There is need to be quiet in this community. But for now, I am a little girl, and so sometimes I go and walk carelessly through the sparse, drowning trees no one else wants to pass. The wetness, cold, and sickness I have gotten used to. But the way my dwelling looks when I see it on hillsides scare me, with how normal we seemed.

Once I saw color.

Now, my sight in this rainy world is only monochrome shades of blue, and rusty stains of dark red blood.

It is surprisingly alright. Maybe I'm just used to it.

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I do not have a name. I suppose I had one, but not even I will bother to remember it.

Instead, I approach murky puddles to glimpse even the tiniest fragment of my reflection. I am a pitiful sight to see, I am sure, with my dark hair and smudged face, with my possibly dark-colored eyes, and the barest of rags on my thin frame. I am not a complete skeleton, however, with how those women eye me in particular and feed me what they can. I do not mull over this, as being a prostitute was better than dying on the streets with no purpose.

The whispers of the separated crowd eventually got to me, one day. _The shinobi are coming. The shinobi are here_.

It was strange, how such words could be heard even in the midst of all others. It was, most likely, just my excitement, my mind that focused on them with an intensity that was foreign to me. A rising warmth, weak against my cold, cold body, but there.

I thought that _shinobi_ was a good word. I don't know why I did, back then.

I do not know when they came. I do not even know this village's name! How would matters like knowing whens matter when I have no food to eat, no water to drink, nor good clothes to wear? The only good of Ame— whose name I only know from the repeated chatter of travelers —was it's rain, ironically, which gave us constant cold but cleansed, at the very least.

I repeat. I do not know when they came.

But when I saw them, I only registered their forehead protectors, which stood out. I ran up to them. I think I did not make a good picture to them. But I ran up to them, and I had said:

"Thank you, mister!"

I looked into one of their eyes, the tentative grin feeling awkward but sincere. I did not know what I was thanking them for.

It was a mistake.

His face contorted into disgust, and he dismissed me with a sharp turn of his head, muttering something under his breath. The words were unfamiliar, but even I could tell they were insulting. My smile faltered, and then, as if that was the breaking point, it fell flat again into my usual deadpan expression.

"Shinobi," some murmured in dark contempt and fear, the old who did not dare to even glance at the ninja. The wind was blowing in my face, bringing the usual cold wetness that came with pouring rainfall, but it was, possibly, the only reason why I heard the ninja.

"...useless..._pigs_."

A strange feeling came upon me then. It was anger, I realize, the defeated rage that came with, for example, someone forcing them off a cliff when they were just— barely —holding onto the edge. The words, _I'm going to die_, repeating over and over in your head. A sick feeling.

They didn't care.

Was that girl's death by their hands? Was that man's grotesque transfiguration caused by these people? Darker my thoughts went, falling fast.

There were never any names here.

_When I was a child, the first name I heard was Jun. Purity. The name of one of the men we had belittled us by our pitiful appearance and treated us like...like...  
><em>

And, well.

For me the last rays of sun rose no more.

(It never did, anyways, yet...is there any hope left in me...?)

No one is going to protect me, I had thought. It is a thought I still think.

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(My hand shakes with fatigue as I try to think of any, any last words.

In the end, I am not surprised by the ones that are carved in my past written language.

...stupid. I'm so _stupid_.)

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><p><strong>endnotes<strong>: Please R&R? :) Should I continue? Now to reread/rewatch the Ame Trio parts...


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